Film Review - Old (2021)

 Old is the new movie by M Night Shyamalan and this one takes place at an island resort where a family (Vicky Crepes, Gael Garcia Bernal, Alexa Swinton and Nolan River) is looking to enjoy a beach holiday together but one day they and other guests of the resort are invited to a secluded beach away from the resort and the longer they stay on the beach they begin to get older very quickly and now the race is on to get off the beach before they grow too old and die.

 

Old was a movie I had very high reservations going into and that is down to M Night Shyamalan who has been in every possible direction in his career, terrifying lows/dizzying highs and creamy middles and he was coming off Split which I loved and Glass which bitterly disappointed me though the preview for Old had me intrigued.

 

And that intrigue surprisingly paid off for me as I quite liked Old and there are 2 reasons for this:

 

- The first is Shyamalan’s storytelling, this movie was proof for me that when M Night gets out of his own way and doesn’t try to be too clever by half or hinge everything on a big twist ending or try to subvert everyone’s expectations he can still deliver an effective drama thriller like this one, I know this is based off of a graphic novel but M Night did a good job here and I found myself really invested in the thriller aspect of the film and the drama aspect, there is a twist of course but it was one that I surprisingly liked and was reminded a little of his 2004 film the Village.

 

- The second is that this movie is anchored by a really good cast who rise to the occasion, Crepes and Bernal are quite good as the parents while River and Swinton are good as well as the young kids who when they get older on the beach are played by Alex Wolff and Thomasin McKenzie and their pretty good too McKenzie in particular is becoming a good young actress and I can’t wait to see her in Last Night in Soho later this year.

 

As for the rest of the cast, Rufus Sewell is pretty good as a doctor stuck on the beach as is Abbey Lee as his young wife and Eliza Scanlen from Little Women as the grown up daughter of Abbey Lee’s character, Ken Leung is good as well and really the whole ensemble cast delivers as well and that makes a big difference as opposed to Glass where the cast was very hit and miss.

 

And so that was Old and before I too grow old and die of old age I will say that this movie is surprisingly worth a watch if you can find it, 3 and a half out of 5.

Film Review - Jungle Cruise (2021)

 Jungle Cruise is the new Disney film based off one of their theme park rides (Pirates of the Caribbean was also based off of a theme park ride and became a successful film franchise) and stars Emily Blunt as Dr Lily Houghton who along with her brother (Jack Whitehall) are determined to travel along the Amazon to find a tree called the Tears of the Moon who is said to contain materials that can cure any disease but to get there they’ll need the help of a tour guide captain (Dwayne Johnson) and avoid the German prince (Jesse Plemons.)

 

I was looking forward to Jungle Cruise despite its year long delay due to the pandemic as I liked the preview I saw for this movie, it used a Creedence song Run Through the Jungle and it gave off a big Tintin vibe which I’m a devotee of and Johnson in the previews for this movie gave off a good Captain Haddock vibe but could this movie deliver the goods or end up shipwrecked at sea.

 

Well it is neither of those instead this is really another Disney film where it’s fine, it’s perfectly entertaining in moments but it feels very forgettable and that’s kind of disappointing for me.

 

Don’t get me wrong the film has its moments and those moments are really when Emily Blunt and Dwayne Johnson are on screen together trading lines and they have a great chemistry together but there is a lot of movie around them that doesn’t work.

 

- First of all the brother character played by Jack Whitehall feels like a human version of the animal sidekicks from a Disney animation film and whereas those characters like Abu or Sebastian or Cogsworth and Lumiere were done very well here it feels very out of place and every time he came on screen I just felt like he got in the way of Blunt and Johnson as I didn’t think he was very funny or very useful and the film would’ve worked better without him.

 

- Secondly a lot of the storytelling feels like a very old fashioned Disney film and not the best kind either, the vibe I got from a lot of it was that of a late 70s/early 80s Disney live action film and I really thought that style had gone out of fashion when Jeffrey Katzenburg took over the production side of Disney in the 80s and they started to lift their game on that side of things with the advent of Touchstone and later Hollywood Pictures but alas it seems I was wrong as the tribe scenes felt very old fashioned in the vein I just outlined.

 

Meanwhile the visual effects did look very computer-ish at times and it’s a shame that given the year long delay this movie has had due to the pandemic that the effects weren’t retooled to look a lot better before its release the time was there to do it and I wish the opportunity was taken to fix the effects before its new release date.

 

As for the villains well Jesse Plemons has been fun in other movies (he really shines in Game Night) but here it feels very cartoonish and silly and I wish the Germans here had been more of a threat and also setting this story in World War 1 was a bit of a mistake and again I wish those involved had seen that mistake and set this movie during the Spanish Flu pandemic it might have given the story more weight.

 

And so that was Jungle Cruise and its fine but not Disney at it’s best, 2 out of 5.

Film Review - Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins (2021)

 Snake Eyes is the newest film in the GI Joe film series and this time Henry Golding stars as Snake Eyes who as a young boy saw his father murdered in front of him and has grown up on the streets until he rescues a young man from the Yakuza who repays that debt by taking him into his clan in Japan but sinister forces are on the loose for this clan possess a great jewel capable of destroying the entire world.

 

Snake Eyes is sadly like Monster Hunter from earlier this year in that I didn’t have a lot of high hopes for it just some escapist fun in the cinema but it fails like Monster Hunter did to deliver on that fun and is extremely boring and there are 2 clear reasons for this:

 

- Firstly the action scenes are fucking terrible, so many of them are either over edited with shaky cam or quick camera movements or they take place at night in low lighting and everyone is wearing dark clothing and you can’t tell who’s fighting who and its awful to watch, the street I walked down after I saw the film had better lighting than the action scenes in this movie and also despite the huge amount of sword fights in this movie there’s no Blood not one drop and it doesn’t feel like a proper Ninja movie without the blood on the floor.

 

- And secondly the storytelling is very predictable here, there are numerous attempts to connect this movie to the broader GI Joe universe and it doesn’t work very well at all and whenever those references came up I just wanted a proper GI Joe film with the kind of outlandishness that the Fast and Furious films have which have more and more developed that live action cartoon feel that a GI Joe film I feel should have but here it didn’t work and it’s a real shame.

 

As for the cast they do their best but only Henry Golding really stands out and seeing him in this movie has convinced me that he would be a great James Bond after Daniel Craig leaves the part with No Time to Die (can that film please hurry up and come out already) though Henry Cavill will give him stiff competition for that part.

 

And so that was Snake Eyes and now you know that this movie sucks and Knowing is Half the Battle, 1 out of 5.